Lilac
by uppitymary
Summary: In which Mary becomes much more inclined to black than she ever thought she would.


"What is that?"

Anna suppresses a wince as her ladyship's voice drifts haltingly towards her. Her tone is not cold, nor is it heated, but flat. The lack of emotion, the lack of anger makes Anna want to seize her by the shoulders and shake her... _scold me! Yell at me! Scream bloody murder at me!_

She shifts, disconcerted (yet expecting this), and murmurs, "Your outfit, milady." Anna grips the affronted object until her knuckles turned white.

Mary swivels round in her vanity chair, and for a brief moment, stares at the material as if it was simply alien to her. Anna merely breathes in the silence, and fiercely reprimands herself for all the times she'd ever wished for a moment of peace and quie -

"No."

Anna relishes the breaker, but the sound of her own voice trembles as she mumbles, "Yes, milady." She can feel her heart trapped in her throat.

Lady Grantham had bought the dress a week ago. She looked nearly ill as she passed the dress to Anna, her fingers trembling the slightest bit as she whispered, "She looks beautiful in lilac."

Her ladyship doesn't look beautiful anymore. Her eyes are too dark, her face gaunt and angular, her lips lacking blood, her skin so pale one can see cerulean blue veins running haphazardly underneath it. Her figure, once slim and healthy, has become skeletal. Her clothes drape uneasily over her as she traipses restlessly through the grounds, her head either bent with resignation or lifted too high with a lesser version of her old defiance.

_No,_ Anna reflects, watching Lady Mary leaning against the vanity, her neck forming a curve as she fixes her eyes on her folded hands, which are stiff and twitching with impatience. _She's still beautiful._

_But lifeless. _As if someone had reached down her throat and scraped away everything inside, leaving her as hollow as a china doll.

She reaches out and grasps the first flash of night she sees.

"Will this be suitable, milady?"

Mary glances at it, lips pressed together. "Yes," she confirms, standing up to be released of her nightwear.

The quiet between is unnerving, yet familiar to Anna after three months. Traces of friendship, long lingering, have been tossed in a drawer and left alone. As she buttons yet another suit of darkness on the woman who is now a stranger to her, Anna swallows imperceptibly as Mary hardly looks at her reflection, and wanders away without a hint of jewelry (with the exception of her wedding ring, glued to her skin), her vanity gone as well.

She wonders, bleakly, if she'll ever stop fastening black.

* * *

_It feels like fraudulence, _she thinks.

Yes, there's that odd feeling of relief, but it is pressed down heavily by the weight of fraudulence. Lilacs represented early and innocent love, but those words felt distinctly foreign to Edith. Her home, her family was tainted with scandal and grief; any mere thought of innocence had long been washed away with the blood of the gone and the tears of the remaining.

She tugs on her sleeves uneasily and reluctantly leaves her haven.

Edith paces downstairs, anticipation pressing at her heels. As she enters the room, she wrings her hands together as she notices that the woman of the hour is not yet present. The rest of her family sits, clustered round the table, bound by comfort of tradition. Her mother (who is eating breakfast downstairs for only the second time at Downton) is wearing the palest of purples, something Edith had not seen since Sybil's death. Her father and Tom, still in dark suits, have been lightened to a medium gray color that reminds her of charcoal.

They all look how Edith feels.

Fake.

She settles down across from Tom and murmurs a subdued greeting which is met with an equal level of enthusiasm. Edith pretends to read the newspaper and chokes down her toast, dryness meeting dryness.

Then she hears the snappish click of heels, feels the all-too-familiar heaviness of exhaustion, holds her breath and jerks her head up -

Edith is surprised to realize that she is not surprised.

Mary stands before them, a vision in black. Her eyes lazily wander over them, and something like disgust mingles briefly in her eyes. Not a word leaves her mouth as she sits down at the far left side, beginning her daily tradition of picking listlessly at her meal.

Cora looks saddened as she tries not to stare too long at her eldest daughter. Tom's face is withdrawn. There is nothing but pity in Robert's eyes, and Edith dearly prays, for his sake, that Mary does not see it.

However, Edith cannot help but despise her sister.

Because she has crushed her with guilt. And with the purple fabric that is slowly constricting her.

"Mary," Cora begins, the caution so acute in her voice that it makes Edith shift in her chair. "I'm going down to see Cousin Isobel later. Would you like to come?" There was underlying gentleness too, as if she were speaking to an infant.

Mary dabs her mouth delicately, brushing away invisible crumbs as she replies coolly, "I daresay I wouldn't be welcome company. I seem to put a damper on everything nowadays."

Edith didn't know that grief could make Mary even more blunt.

"I don't think that," Cora murmurs quietly, pity becoming apparent in her eyes as well, but Mary has already turned back to her untouched food, head high and neck like a swan's.

Edith eventually meets her sister's darkened gaze, silently challenging her to argue. She wants to hear her sister's cold retorts, her amused and critical observations. She wants to see Mary roll her at eyes at her refutes.

She wants _something_.

"Is there something you'd like to say?"

The monotony in her voice makes Edith despise her again. "No."

* * *

Mrs. Hughes sees it everyday.

She sees it in the shaking of Daisy's chin. Alfred's dimmed eyes. Jimmy's uncertain grimace, as if he isn't sure that he should be daring to smile at all. The hunch in Mr. Carson's shoulders.

She sees the black storm hovering over Downton.

The week the family left for the Highlands, she sensed its birth. The eerie, disconcerting calm before the storm, which she felt in the pulse of her wrists and the pit of her stomach. The day of Mr. Crawley's passing, it had hit its climax, thundering and flailing and screeching its way through the house. In the month following, it had remained, pouring much too heavily.

Now, it was at a steady stream, but slowly lightening. Mrs. Hughes hopes they will make it to the sprinkling of a drizzle within the next month.

But when she sees Lady Mary in black, it's all it takes to be thrown back into the tumultuous storm.

She feels sick whenever she thinks of her. She feels sick whenever she thinks of the way she spoke of her.

Cold.

Snobbish.

Pretentious.

_Heartless._

Mrs. Hughes knows all too well that Lady Mary, indeed, has a heart. A heart that almost reluctantly grew, was stamped on many times along the way, but thrived and rejoiced for a year.

Only to be shrunk down to its core and disintegrated.

"Mrs. Hughes? Have you seen my son?" Mrs. Hughes jerks out of her thoughts to be unkindly given reality. Lady Mary looks tired, as always, but Mrs. Hughes is grateful for the trace of irritation in her sunken eyes. She hangs on to it, hoping it will release the tiny part of her soul that cannot stop aching.

"No, milady. I'm afraid not." How can she not be aware of it? The storm constantly raging over her head? Mrs. Hughes looks at Mary and sees the downpour, soaking her to the bone, the black material of her dress wilting; she hears thunder, too, crashing ceremoniously, resemblant of the dressing gong.

Or perhaps Lady Mary does feel it. And pretends she is oblivious.

A small sigh escapes Mary's ghosted lips, which fall back automatically in their slightly downturned position. "If you see his nanny, please tell them that I've gone outside. I would like to see him when I return." With this, she turns away and takes her storm with her.

_Outside._ Translated, it meant _his grave._

And with her departure comes Mr. Carson's arrival. He gazes at the disappearing, weathered woman with such sorrow that Mrs. Hughes fleetingly believes that he may be hurting as much as she is. "She's not wearing lilac," he states, and the disappointment in his voice is stark.

Mrs. Hughes watches with him, shivering as she feels the storm pick up slightly. "No," she affirms. "She's not."

* * *

Mary's mind is blank.

The day of his death - she'll say it, even if no one else will - she could hardly tell what she was feeling. All she remembered was the vicious pounding of her head and heart, the heavy gasps at the back of her throat, the burning sensation in her legs as she dug her fingernails into her unblemished calves. Then eventually, the black hole which yawned open and enveloped her in its darkest corner.

Yes, she remembers.

Which is why she's thankful that all she feels is nothing. Everything and nothing.

As she trudges along a path which is already engraved with months of her footprints, her thoughts briefly flit to her son. Their relationship is strained; at least, to her. There are days in which she clutches him close to her chest, vowing to protect him until the end of her life, their precious prince and heir. Then the next, she takes him and shoves him towards the nurse, into a dusty and tiny corner of her heart.

Because his eyes are too blue. Once his hair grows, she knows it will fall into his eyes. His smile is tender, curious.

She has only known him three months and he is much too familiar.

She does not want to love so deeply ever again.

Today, she had wanted to take him with her on her daily walk. But she cannot help but breathe more easily when he is unable to be found - or perhaps she didn't look diligently enough. Whatever the case, she is appeased as she roams along her path, lone - as she likes it.

Still dressed in black, she feels like a gaping patch in the wall of Downton. Amongst the _lilac_, she thinks. Mary doesn't know whether she is angry or saddened that they have shed their black exteriors, but she is certainly not happy.

A laugh, dry and humorless, claws its way out of her throat. _Happy? _She was foolish for even thinking that she possibly could be. Of course she wasn't. Foolish.

Mary decides, that despite her previous beliefs, she does not hate black as much as she used to. It sympathizes with her, but it does not condescend her. It's a message to those around her: _I'm grieving, but I don't want or need you._ It reminds her to not forget; painfully so, but with a firmness that she is grateful for.

When she approaches her destination, she can only stare. The dedication is so simple, so completely _him_ that her throat constricts and suddenly she hates them all, hates them for trying to move on. For making him a mere memory, a thing of the past. Because that was what the color change meant, didn't it? They wanted to store him away, repress him.

She kneels down in the soil, pressing her knees down harder than necessary and hoping her dress will stain. She leans forward and grabs the headstone with a sigh, tracing the letters as if it is her lifeline. Mary wants to laugh at the irony, but she's forgotten how to.

"Oh, Matthew," she breathes. "I detest lilac."

* * *

_AN: I have to admit, I was very nervous about posting this. It's been quite a few years since I've shared my writing, and this is my first one in the Downton archive; this is going to amongst so many incredible stories. This particular piece was inspired by a quote I read in an article about S4: "The convention of the time was to shift into lilac after three months, but Mary has refused and **retreated almost entirely into herself**." I can't wait to watch it! Michelle's acting is going to be phenomenal. _

_I hope I did Mary Crawley, a character who absolutely fascinates me, justice in this story. I would love comments!_


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